In the News

November 3, 2016 | It only took 108 years. The Chicago Cubs finally achieved what seemed to be the impossible, breaking the Curse of the Billy Goat in a remarkable comeback to beat the Cleveland Indians in the World Series 4 games to 3. In honor of the end of the drought, OpenSecrets Blog thought it would be only fitting to profile the…

October 21, 2016 | September’s fundraising and spending by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump outpaced the numbers the candidates posted in any month so far. No surprise there. But the candidates’ activity was still pretty punk compared to the previous two presidential races. Clinton compounded her well-documented fundraising dominance as the race turned down the home stretch. In September,…

September 27, 2016 | Four years after it began requiring TV stations to upload their records of political ad sales to a central government website, the Federal Communications Commission maintains a recordkeeping system that makes finding out who an ad’s sponsor is feel like a treasure hunt. In 2012, the FCC approved a rule requiring broadcast stations in the largest…

August 19, 2016 | Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) and his challenger Russ Feingold have raised almost exactly the same amount of money in their race for a Wisconsin Senate seat. But they’ve done so in very different ways. In terms of fundraising, the race is among the tightest in the country, not to mention one of the few where a challenger has raised…

July 28, 2016 | The klieg lights were on full strength Wednesday at a star-studded lunch highlighting obesity treatment and, later, a Fergie concert, both put on by the Creative Coalition — with help from pharma giants like Novo Nordisk — on the third day of the Democratic National Convention. “I think you couple the artistry with celebrity to create…

July 15, 2016 | Yesterday morning, we published a story saying that Jeffrey Miller, campaign manager of former Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s 2016 presidential campaign and the director of his leadership PAC, received nearly half the money spent by those organizations. Yesterday afternoon, we pulled the story. Miller contacted us about 27 hours after we first tried to reach…

February 25, 2016 | When Democrats consider their odds for regaining the Senate this November, one of the first states that comes to mind is Pennsylvania, where first-term Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican, is locked in a rematch with former Democratic Sen. Joe Sestak, who lost to Toomey in 2010. But for a race with such high stakes, it seems, at…

February 17, 2016 | President Obama may pick his nominee to fill the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat as early as next week. If the inside-the-Beltway speculation is any good, chances are he’ll pick a Democratic donor. OpenSecrets Blog reviewed contributions by nine potential picks listed in reports by Politico and the Associated Press and found that, of those who have made contributions…

August 25, 2015 | Ted Cruz is on a crusade to lock down what he calls “the evangelical bracket,” emailing 100,000 pastors last weekend to mobilize their congregations in a 50-state campaign to defund Planned Parenthood. The Texas GOP senator, who carried the votes of many religious conservatives in his 2012 Senate run, maintained at a religious liberty-themed campaign…

August 21, 2015 | The 2016 presidential candidates are well ensconced in the money race, but they are not the only ones infected with donation fever. Candidates in competitive Senate races are trying to raise as much money as they possibly can, while also seeking to boast that they receive more small-dollar donations, a sign that they are more…

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